CICERO’S SPEECHES AGAINST CATILINE
In 63 BC, the Roman consul Marcus Tullius Cicero delivered four public speeches (Orationes in Catilinam) against the Roman noble Lucius Sergius Catilina for leading a conspiracy to overthrow the Roman state. Presented here are the only references to Greek love in these speeches. These appear in the second speech, made in the Forum on 9 November to the people, to convince them that Catiline would not support their interests. The speeches were published by Cicero (not necessarily exactly as they had been delivered) in ca. 60 BC, in order to justify his conduct.
The translation is by Louis E. Lord for the Loeb Classical Library volume 324 published by William Heinemann in London in 1946.
The Second Speech
Mentioned as an aside, while disparaging both Catiline’s cause and most of his followers for the failure of the latter to follow him when he fled Rome:
| He did take that Tongilius, I may tell you, whom he had begun to love in early boyhood,[1] | [iv] Utinam ille omnis secum suas copias eduxisset! Tongilium mihi eduxit quem amare in praetexta1 coeperat, |
In an attack on the character of Catiline’s associates:
|
What poisoner in all Italy, what gladiator, what robber, what assassin, what parricide, what forger of wills, what cheat, what glutton, what spendthrift, what adulterer, what infamous woman, what corrupter of youth, what profligate, what abandoned character can be found who does not admit that he has lived on most intimate terms with Catiline? Aye indeed what man has ever presented such great allurements to youth as this man [Catiline]? He loved some himself most shamelessly.[2] He pandered to the love of others most abominably. To some he promised the satisfaction of their lust, to others the murder of their parents, not only encouraging them but even assisting them. |
[vii] quis tota Italia veneficus, quis gladiator, quis latro, quis sicarius, quis parricida, quis testamentorum subiector, quis circumscriptor, quis ganeo, quis nepos, quis adulter, quae mulier infamis, quis corruptor iuventutis, quis corruptus, quis perditus inveniri potest qui se cum Catilina non familiarissime vixisse fateatur? […] [viii] Iam vero quae tanta umquam in ullo iuventutis inlecebra fuit quanta in illo? qui alios ipse amabat turpissime, aliorum amori flagitiosissime serviebat, aliis fructum libidinum, aliis mortem parentum non modo impellendo verum etiam adiuvando pollicebatur. |
[1] The phrase translated as “in early boyhood” is in praetexta, which means more precisely that Tongilius was still wearing the purple-edged toga for boys that they exchanged for a man’s toga in a coming-of-age ceremony between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.
[2] Catiline’s love of these boys was “shameless” because it entailed stuprum (outrage) against the sexual integrity of free-born Romans. Nowhere in any of his writings does Cicero suggest stuprum against boys was any worse than stuprum against females.
Comments powered by CComment